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Anthony_226

Email anthony.robins@otago.ac.nz

I joined the Department of Computer Science as a lecturer in artificial intelligence in August 1989, as one of the three Otago “New Blood” lecturers. I retired from the School of Computing in April 2025, somewhat older but probably no wiser.

My main areas of research were (and to some extent still are) cognitive science, neural network models of cognition (catastrophic forgetting, pseuodrehearsal, the consolidation of learning) and computer science education (particularly the teaching and learning of a first programming language).

I am no longer accepting applications from potential PhD students or postdocs.

As well as research, I very much enjoyed my teaching and many service activities. In short I had a very fortunate working life at Otago. My heartfelt thanks to all my wonderful colleagues, students and friends. My best wishes to all for the future.

Selected publications

Publications

Samarasekara, C. K., Ott, C., & Robins, A. (2024). A framework identifying challenges and solutions for high school computing. Education & Information Technologies, 29, 15621-15654. doi: 10.1007/s10639-023-12329-9 Journal - Research Article

McAlister, H., Robins, A., & Szymanski, L. (2024). Prototype analysis in Hopfield networks with Hebbian learning. Neural Computation, 36(11), 2322-2364. doi: 10.1162/neco_a_01704 Journal - Research Article

Blanchette, G., & Robins, A. (2024). Modelling supra-classical logic in a Boltzmann neural network: II incongruence. Journal of Logic & Computation, 34(1). doi: 10.1093/logcom/exac104 Journal - Research Article

Munasinghe, B., Bell, T., & Robins, A. (2023). Computational thinking and notional machines: The missing link. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 23(4), 44. doi: 10.1145/3627829 Journal - Research Article

Samarasekara, C. K., Ott, C., & Robins, A. (2023). Future scenarios for high school digital technology in New Zealand. Proceedings of the 25th Australasian Computing Education (ACE) Conference. (pp. 21-30). New York, NY: ACM. doi: 10.1145/3576123.3576126 Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Full paper

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